Scaling Rishi Sunak’s empty home to drape it in black fabric in protest at oil drilling is not the first time Greenpeace has targeted the home of senior politicians.
The environmental group surrounded David Cameron’s Cotswolds cottage in 2014 to campaign against his support for fracking, and mounted the roof of John Prescott’s home in 2005 in a demonstration against the government’s slowness on climate targets. It has also previously carried out stunts at Sunak’s North Yorkshire mansion.
But this time, No 10 was in no mood to turn a blind eye. The government ordered an immediate ceasing of ties with the group, which engages with departments on a range of policy issues.
Clambering on to a politician’s home was always going to be a controversial move. Some countries, such as Ireland, are taking steps to ban protests outside politicians’ houses, and MPs have a right to be concerned about their security after the murders of Jo Cox and David Amess.
But anyone with a cursory glance at Greenpeace’s history would know the organisation’s commitment to non-violent peacefulness during its direct action protests.
Its policy experts are regularly consulted by Whitehall officials and they are regarded as an integral part of the non-governmental organisation ecosystem campaigning for global progress on the climate emergency.
However, casting Greenpeace activists as extremists appears to suit the Conservative’s aims of trying to paint Labour as being allied to “woke” organisations.
A culture war campaign is under way to associate Keir Starmer with “lefty lawyers” who support asylum seekers in their efforts to come to the UK, as well as “a criminal eco mob” of Just Stop Oil protesters because one of the group’s donors has also given money to the Labour party.
The refusal to deal with Greenpeace is part of this drive. Shortly after cutting ties with the organisation, Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, called on Starmer to ban members of Greenpeace from standing for parliament after it emerged a Labour candidate for Mid-Bedfordshire had taken part in a zombie-themed protest outside the Home Office against the public order bill.
“Labour have gone too far this time – plotting to put eco-fanatics in parliament,” he said.
The government has claimed to stand up for free speech and against “cancel culture”, appointing a Cambridge philosophy professor as a “free speech tsar” for universities in opposition to the no-platforming of people because of their views.
However, Sunak’s administration appears far less tolerant of free speech for people with different goals to its own – or when it suits them to create a clear dividing line with Labour.
The prime minister’s government believes the voting public – however keen they are in opinion polls to show they support climate policies – are suspicious of activists who disrupt daily life, being concerned about anti-motorist policies and less favourable towards net zero when it starts affecting their cost of living.
Politics has held a fragile consensus on the need to tackle the climate crisis for some time, but Labour is acutely conscious of the Conservatives’ attempts to make the speed and spend on achieving net zero into an electoral issue.
Anticipating more Conservative attacks, Starmer last Sunday distanced the party from the “contemptible” disruption of groups such as Just Stop Oil and called on Sunak to stop “trying to create a cultural wedge between motorists and those who want to tackle climate change”.
The risk is that Sunak’s move to present himself as “eco-pragmatist” against Starmer’s “eco-fanatic” will lead both sides to water down the strength of their net zero policies at the very time the government’s own experts are warning that more, not less, action is needed.
• This article was amended on 11 August 2023 to clarify reference in the sub-heading to Greenpeace as a ‘charity’. For legal reasons, the organisation’s campaigning arm is a limited company.
